South Africa Lifts Some Rioting Laws : Botha Says State of Emergency Eased Violence in 6 Areas

President Pieter W. Botha today lifted a three-month state of emergency in six districts but left it in effect in 30 other areas, including cities in Cape province, where five people died overnight in clashes with police.

The state of emergency was still being enforced in the major centers of Johannesburg and its industrial suburbs.

In a statement from Pretoria, Botha said, “Conditions in some of the affected magisterial districts have improved to the extent that the government has decided to lift the state of emergency in those districts.”

The six areas--Hankey, Balfour, Alexandria, Humansdorp, Steytlerville and Westonaria--are small towns in rural areas of the eastern Cape province and Transvaal province.

Effective Measures Cited

“The lifting of the state of emergency in these areas is proof to the effectiveness of these measures in ensuring a return to stability in these areas,” Botha said.

The state of emergency took effect July 21 and gave police broad powers to detain suspects without charges and without access to lawyers. The white-minority government said the measure was necessary to end anti-apartheid rioting that had resulted in hundreds of deaths since September, 1984.

In Cape Town, mixed-race protesters raged through the downtown area today, trapping white shoppers in the city’s exclusive boutiques and defying police, who blasted them with water cannons and beat them with whips.

The Cape Town violence started after a group of about 100 singing mixed-race women joined several hundred students near the city’s exclusive Golden Acre shopping mall to protest the opening of a trial today for three Colored men who are charged with the murder of a white policeman.

Water Cannon, Dye

After warning the demonstrators and a crowd of white onlookers to disperse, police blasted the protesters with a water cannon, covering them with a purple dye, and then charged them, sparking a stampede through the shopping mall.

Youths then swarmed through the streets, overturning two delivery trucks and pelting pursuing policemen with tomatoes and paving stones. Rioters were whipped on the ground when they fell.

Shopkeepers locked their doors and pulled down metal gates to guard against looting. Hundreds of white shoppers on their lunch break were trapped inside a large department store when security guards locked the doors.

Court Gallery Cleared

Inside the Cape Town magistrate’s court, the public gallery had to be cleared when spectators disrupted the proceedings against the three murder suspects with shouts and clenched-fist black power salutes. The trial was eventually postponed for procedural reasons until next month.

White vigilantes took to the streets today, killing one man elsewhere in Cape Province, where police killed at least five people and wounded one in street battles overnight, officials said.

Three of the deaths occurred at Phillipi, near Cape Town, where police said they found the bodies of three Coloreds who died from shotgun wounds, apparently inflicted by officers.